Every kid, whether they like it or not, will have to take a bath at some point. Since bath toys are a quintessential baby item, there are MANY out there. Here are the toys we think are pretty good.

A bit of info on bath toys. First, they are prone to mold. It makes sense; they are used in a damp bath and spend most of their time in the bathroom, which tends to me the most humid room in the house. This article from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital discusses where exactly mold appears in the toys [^1]. When there is a small hole (like in the traditional “squeaking rubber duck”), water can get inside, and most likely gets trapped in there. Bacteria or mold spores are carried in there by the water, and the damp warm environment encourages growth. We obviously want to avoid this in bath toys, and the good news is that there is one easy way to do it: make sure the bath toy has no holes! Unfortunately that means no squeaking toys, but honestly, your ears will thank you for that.

In researching bath toys and mold, I came across this paper in Nature titled Ugly ducklings (full text available!) and I had to read it. If you don’t want to know exactly how much gross stuff plastic bath toys have on them, I highly recommend you don’t read the article. The researchers basically quantified the amount of biofilm on bath toys that were made of plastic - spoiler, it’s a lot! Sometimes plastic bath toys are unavoidable, but the good news is that the recommendation we provide for bath toys aren’t made of plastic at all.

The criteria we had for choosing a bath toy were as follows:

  • No holes for water to stay in - we don’t want mold in our bath toys. Some toys open up to fully dry (and therefore are less likely to have mold growth), but for simplicity we didn’t want to have to remember to do that.
  • Natural rubber material - we want to avoid plastic toys in general, wood toys are a bad idea for the bath (wood is porous, so lots of places for mold and mildew), and metal toys for the bath seem cold and hazardous.
  • (nice to have) An actual rubber duck - let’s be real, we all want to give our babies a rubber duck.

The research led to the company called Hevea, based in Denmark. It is a Certified B Corp, founded on the premise that natural and sustainable materials are better for babies and for the planet. The word “Hevea” is actually the genus of the plant family that contains the rubber tree. Many of Hevea’s products are made of 100% natural rubber, including their bath toys. The bath toys specifically are plastic-free, BPA-free, phthalate-free. The only ingredient is 100% natural rubber.

Direct from the retailer’s website, they carry a variety of bath toys, but in my opinion the classic rubber duck is where it’s at. Besides, the word “kawan” means “friend” in Malay. What can be better than that!

Here are a varieties of bath toys available on the the Hevea Amazon storefront. The variety is much reduced compared to the company website directly, but it is available in the US!

Note, Hevea is based in the EU, so the easiest way to get their products in the US is through the Hevea Amazon storefront, which is what the company website redirects you to when you try to buy the products in the US.

Please enjoy these 100% natural rubber, no-mold-in-the-hole, support-a-sustainable-B-corp bath toys for your kids!